Basecamp's Trix is a simple and straightforward HTML editor ideal for creating forum markup. Here are the steps for getting Trix enabled in your Thredded forum:

* Install [Trix](https://github.com/basecamp/trix).

* Add a Trix editor to the post form view hook in the Thredded initializer:

```ruby
# config/initializers/thredded.rb
Rails.application.config.to_prepare do
  Thredded.view_hooks.post_form.content_text_area.config.after do |form|
    content_tag 'trix-editor', '', input: "#{form[:form].object_name}_content"
  end
end
```

* Hide the default textarea control via css. Use zero opacity and height so as to not break the form validations.
````
// Your sass file with thredded overrides
#thredded--container {
  ul.thredded--form-list {
    textarea[id*="_content"] {
      height: 0px !important;
      opacity: 0;
      position: absolute;
    }
  }
}
````

That's pretty much it. Refer to the Trix documentation to check out drag-and-drop image uploading and other cool features. If you're interested in embedding YouTube videos, note that the YouTube pipeline currently used by Thredded will not embed YouTube links within element tags as rendered by Trix. See [this pull request](https://github.com/st0012/html-pipeline-youtube/pull/5) for a solution.

Looking for other options? [This issue](https://github.com/thredded/thredded/issues/312) discusses other possibilities.
